I am a Burmese exile taking a near-permanent refuge in New York and Sydney. Here are my essays about Burma and anything else I feel like writing about. And posting the articles I like from selected sites. Bridging Burma to the world this Blog is more of a Politically-Oriented Literary Blog than a Plain News Blog or a Sophisticated Thoughts Blog.

Thursday, April 28, 2016

Two Pakistanis now working as cabbies. A
Sudanese guy who fixes flat tires for a living. A Palestinian woman, formerly
married to a guy involved in credit card fraud. A Lebanese woman who works in a
hotel but once made excellent money catering to all the needs of Middle Eastern
royalty when they visited New York. And a Somali guy — perhaps the most daring
person I know — who scrounges out a good living doing this and that.

What do these six people have in common? They are, you might say, “good
Muslims” who spy on bad Muslims and any other troublemakers who might cross
their paths. They live and work in the New York area and regularly tip off law
enforcement to wrongdoing. And they aren’t the only ones.

One of the cabbies — who is a Hindu
posing as a Muslim — says he personally knows of at least 10 Muslims who have
been keeping their ears and eyes open for potential problems and reporting them
to various US government agencies.

Wednesday, April 27, 2016

On 31 March 2016, a tribunal set up by
the Indian government upheld a ban on the National Socialist Council of
Nagaland (Khaplang) (NSCN(K)) for five years. The case pertains to the 4 June
2015 attacks carried out by NSCN(K) insurgents on Indian military personnel,
which claimed the lives of 18 Indian soldiers.

NSCN(K) is a factional offshoot of the NSCN, a group formed in 1980,
dedicated to creating a sovereign nation for the Naga people carved out of
Indian and Myanmar territories. It came into existence in 1988 under the
leadership of Sangwang Sangnyu Khaplang, a Myanmar national. The tribunal’s
decision is another step forward in meeting the strategic objective to cap and
eliminate the cross-border insurgency affecting the northeastern states of
India.

On 6 November 2015, the Indian
government declared NSCN(K) a terrorist organisation. That September, the
government had banned NSCN(K) as an ‘unlawful organisation’ under the Unlawful
Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967. The group has been involved in as many as
six attacks on civilians and security forces, including the deadly June 2015
attacks.

Al-Qaeda Claims Bangladesh Machete
Murders, Including LGBT Editor. The banned group Ansar-al Islam, the
Bangladeshi branch of al-Qaida on the Indian subcontinent, has claimed
responsibility for the killings of gay rights activist Mannan and his friend in
the capital, Dhaka.

The Ansar al-Islam, the Bangladesh branch of the al-Qaeda in Indian
Sub-Continent (AQIS), has claimed responsibility for the death of at least
three secular writers hacked to death in the past year, including the murder
this week of the editor of an LGBT magazine.

BDNews24 conveyed that an email
allegedly sent from Mufti Abdullah Ashraf, the spokesman for the branch, to
Bangladesh media said that AQIS committed the murder of Niladry Chattopadhya, a
secular writer. His widow told The Guardian she lives in hiding. “I cannot lead
a normal life. I am afraid of traveling alone,” explained Asha Mone. “Each new
killing is only increasing the sense of fear.”

Tuesday, April 26, 2016

In support of gender equality, human
rights and civil liberties, a group of bloggers is doing battle with Islamists
online — and paying dearly for it.

Until he was stabbed multiple times with a kitchen knife and forced to
flee to Europe two years ago, Asif Mohiuddin was a leading member of
Bangladesh’s ‘‘freethinker’’ movement and the country’s best-known secular
provocateur. We met last June at a cafe on a pedestrian promenade around the
corner from his apartment, a sunlit space in a shabby-­chic neighborhood in
northern Germany. (He asked me not to name the city.)

Mohiuddin, dressed that day in jeans
and a green T-shirt that proclaimed ‘‘American Atheists Convention, Memphis,
April 2-5, 2015,’’ was still getting used to the tranquillity of his new
surroundings. Shortly after he secured a fellowship at a German institute and
left Bangladesh, extremists serially murdered four of his friends — all secular
bloggers who had criticized fundamentalist Islam and whose names appeared on
‘‘hit lists’’ assembled by hard-­liners and disseminated on social media.

Monday, April 25, 2016

The United States maintains certain
sanctions in Myanmar against many individuals, military-led institutions, and
other organizations for their involvement in the Southeast Asian nation's
unpleasant past.

Although the most basic sanctions have been lifted and the country is in
the process of moving from military to civilian rule, in order to continue the
remaining sanctions regimen, each May the U.S. president must issue an order
indicating that "the actions and policies of the Government of Burma
continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security
and foreign policy of the United States."

This is bizarre considering that the
U.S. has opened a trade office, encouraged responsible investment, and is
actively engaged in an economic aid program in the country formerly known as
Burma. If one were to take the U.S. statement seriously, its government is
encouraging its citizens who are involved in these programs to put their safety
in jeopardy by operating in Myanmar. Although this is simply a U.S.
bureaucratic requirement, how the Burmese or foreign investors may feel about
it raises other issues.

Saturday, April 23, 2016

(CNN) BANGLADESH: Once again, a secular
Muslim is hacked to death for his un-Islamic views. Muslim assailants hacked to
death a Bangladeshi professor early Saturday near his home in Rajshahi city,
authorities said.

Rezaul Karim Siddique, 58, was an
English professor at Rajshahi University. He was waiting for a bus to take him
to campus when two or three people attacked him from behind and stabbed him in
the neck, according to Sadhir Haider Chowdhury, a city police commissioner.

The professor died on the spot. It's
unclear whether his attack was related to the recent hacking deaths of bloggers
in the nation. An investigation is ongoing.

Friday, April 22, 2016

ISIS
has expressed several times that Hindu India is at its radar for attack and
conversion. The Islamic State (IS or ISIS) militant group says it wants to use
Bangladesh as a launching pad to gain a foothold in neighboring Hindu-majority
India and Buddhist-dominated Myanmar.

The plan was revealed by the alleged chief of ISIS in Bangladesh, named
as Sheikh Abu Ibrahim al-Hanif, in an interview with the IS mouthpiece
magazine, Dabiq. It was immediately dismissed by Bangladesh’s Home Minister
Asaduzzaman Khan, who insisted that IS has no presence in his country and that the
South Asian nation would never allow IS to use it as a base to expand its
influence in the region.

The IS had claimed responsibility for a
series of killings and attacks of bloggers, writers, foreigners and non-Sunni
Muslim minorities. Khan said however that some local militants had been using
the “IS brand to add value to their names.”

‘Stepping-Stone’

In his interview, al-Hanif said that
Bangladesh was “an important region” for the IS and its “global jihad” due to
its “strategic geographic position.” “[Bangladesh] is located on the eastern
side of India, whereas the [Pakistan-Afghanistan region] is located on its
western side,” he noted.

Thursday, April 21, 2016

The first victim of the Islamist war in
Algeria was a girl who refused the veil, Katia Bengana, who defended her choice
even as the executioners pointed a gun at her head. In 1994, Algiers literally
awoke to walls plastered with posters announcing the execution of unveiled
women.

In April 1947, Princess Lalla Aisha
gave a speech in Tangiers and people listened astonished to that unveiled girl.
In a few weeks, women throughout the country refused the scarf. Today Morocco is one of the freest countries in
the Arab world.

In the mid-1980s, sharia law was implemented in many countries, women in
the Middle East were placed in a portable prison and in Europe they resumed the
veil to reclaim their "identity," which meant the refusal of
assimilation to Western values and the Islamization of many European cities. First
veils were imposed on women, then Islamists began their jihad against the West.

Wednesday, April 20, 2016

Despite her party’s electoral triumphs
in Myanmar, it looked as if the Nobel laureate’s executive powers were blocked.
But no.

Through the endless years of house
arrest, through the celebrity of the Nobel Peace Prize, through personal
tragedy and through steady, determined confrontation with the military and
quasi-military powers that be in Myanmar (formerly known as Burma), Aung San
Suu Kyi mastered the subtle art of the workaround. When any one path to her
goal was blocked, she found several others.

Last month, as her National League for
Democracy (NLD) government was being installed in Myanmar, Aung San Suu Kyi
took a number of bold steps to translate her decisive victory in the November
2015 elections into a clear message that civilians are now in charge after more
than half a century of military-dictated government.

Tuesday, April 19, 2016

Economists for decades have agreed that
more open international trade is good for the U.S. economy. But recent research
finds that while that's still true, when it comes to China, the downside for
American workers has been much more painful than the experts predicted. And
that's playing out on the presidential campaign trail in a big way.

'Disastrous' Trade Agreements?

If you're Bernie Sanders and you want
to get your supporters fired up at a rally, bashing trade deals like the North
American Free Trade Agreement and the Trans-Pacific Partnership is a good way
to go. Sanders recently said to huge applause that his opponent Hillary Clinton
wasn't qualified to be president because she supported "every disastrous
trade agreement, which has cost us millions of decent-paying jobs."

Likewise, in a Fox News debate, Donald
Trump said the TPP is "a horrible deal."

"It's a deal that was designed for
China to come in as they always do through the back door and totally take
advantage of everyone," he said.

Monday, April 18, 2016

How US covered up Saudi role in 9/11. In
its report on the still-censored “28 pages” implicating the Saudi government in
9/11, “60 Minutes” last weekend said the Saudi role in the attacks has been
“soft-pedaled” to protect America’s delicate alliance with the oil-rich
kingdom.

That’s quite an understatement.

Actually, the kingdom’s involvement was deliberately covered up at the
highest levels of our government. And the coverup goes beyond locking up 28
pages of the Saudi report in a vault in the US Capitol basement. Investigations
were throttled. Co-conspirators were let off the hook.

Case agents I’ve interviewed at the
Joint Terrorism Task Forces in Washington and San Diego, the forward operating
base for some of the Saudi hijackers, as well as detectives at the Fairfax
County (Va.) Police Department who also investigated several 9/11 leads, say
virtually every road led back to the Saudi Embassy in Washington, as well as
the Saudi Consulate in Los Angeles. Yet time and time again, they were
called off from pursuing leads. A common excuse was “diplomatic immunity.”

Sunday, April 17, 2016

For many years, I was reluctant to
write a memoir of my experience leading the investigation and prosecution of
the jihadists against whom we are still at war over 20 years later. For one
thing, while an exhilarating experience for a trial lawyer, it was also a very
hard time for my family, for obvious reasons.

Also, with all the tough judgment calls
we had to make, we inevitably made some mistakes — “we” very much including me.
A triumphant outcome has a pleasant way of bleaching away any memory of errors;
to write honestly about the case would mean revisiting them. Who needed that?
And about that triumph: I had, and have, a gnawing sense that we failed.

Yes, the conviction of the Blind Sheikh
and his henchmen was a great law-enforcement success. Throughout the long trial
and in the years that followed, though, I came to appreciate that national
security is principally about keeping Americans safe, not winning court cases.
Sure, winning in this instance meant justice was done and some terrorists were
incarcerated.

WASHINGTON — Saudi Arabia has told the
Obama administration and members of Congress that it will sell off hundreds of
billions of dollars’ worth of American assets held by the kingdom if Congress
passes a bill that would allow the Saudi government to be held responsible in
American courts for any role in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The Obama administration has lobbied Congress to block the bill’s
passage, according to administration officials and congressional aides from
both parties, and the Saudi threats have been the subject of intense
discussions in recent weeks between lawmakers and officials from the State
Department and the Pentagon. The officials have warned senators of diplomatic
and economic fallout from the legislation.

Adel al-Jubeir, the Saudi foreign
minister, delivered the kingdom’s message personally last month during a trip
to Washington, telling lawmakers that Saudi Arabia would be forced to sell up
to $750 billion in treasury securities and other assets in the United States
before they could be in danger of being frozen by American courts.

Thursday, April 14, 2016

Why has Islam been able to grow at such
an unprecedented pace in Europe, and why has it been allowed to do so
practically unchallenged? There are many reasons for this, but one contributing
factor that has facilitated this rapid growth has been the decision to
artificially divide the religion into two opposing philosophies with completely
different goals and values, which has transformed it into an ideological
version of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

By firmly dividing its adherents (Muslims) into two distinct camps — the
extremists who are alleged to be misusing their religion and who only
constitute a tiny minority, and the moderates who ostensibly represent the
majority and who strongly opposes the extremists — Islam has managed to establish
a defence that is almost impenetrable, and that has fostered an environment in
which meaningless terms such as Islamophobia are actually given credence.

This clever distinction, which has in
effect divided Islam into a moderate and an extreme form, has ensured that it
can continue to grow unabated and without being properly challenged, as any
terrorist attack committed by its members can be blamed on the extremists and
thus also used as an argument to exonerate the moderates.

Wednesday, April 13, 2016

One woman helped the mastermind of the
Paris attacks. The other turned him in.

All of Europe was looking for
Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the planner of the Paris attacks, when two women approached
his roadside hiding place, guided by the voice of someone secretly watching
from a distance and giving directions by phone. “Go forward. Walk. Stop,” the voice
said. “He can see you. He’s coming.”

It was 9:30 p.m., two days after the
bombings and shootings in November that left 130 people dead. France had closed
its borders and launched a massive manhunt. But Abaaoud emerged from behind a
bush and strolled toward the women as if there were nothing unusual about this
rendezvous. One of the women, Abaaoud’s cousin,
jumped into his arms, saying, “Hamid, you’re alive!”

But her companion, who had come without
knowing who they were to meet, felt a shudder of recognition. “I’d seen him on
TV,” she later told police, referring to videos from Syria that showed Abaaoud
dragging dead bodies behind a truck.

Monday, April 11, 2016

Shock Poll: 23% of British Muslims Want
Sharia Rules in UK. The figures are part of a new poll released on April 13 in
the TV documentary What British Muslims Really Think, aired on Channel 4. While
86% of Muslims feel a sense of belonging in the UK, pollsters warned of a
"chasm" opening between Muslims and non-Muslims. Picture: Islamists
at a protest in the UK.

“The integration of Muslims will probably be the hardest task” the UK
has ever faced, according to the country's former Equality and Human Rights
Commission chairman Trevor Phillips. He made the comments about a new study
conducted for Britain’s Channel 4 TV, analyzing What British Muslims Really
Think.

The poll indicated that large numbers
of Muslims, 86 percent, feel a strong sense of belonging towards Britain, while
88% think the UK is a good place for Muslims to live. On most things 78% say
they would like to integrate. However, there are key differences where sections
of the Muslim community have very different and troubling views.

UK Equalities Chief Who Popularised The
Term ‘Islamophobia’ Admits: ‘I Thought Muslims Would Blend into Britain… I
Should Have Known Better’.

The former head of Britain’s Equalities and Human Rights Commission
(EHRC), Trevor Phillips, has admitted he “got almost everything wrong” on
Muslim immigration in a damning new report on integration, segregation, and how
the followers of Islam are creating “nations within nations” in the West.

Phillips, a former elected member of
the Labour Party who served as the Chairman of the EHRC from 2003-2012 will
present “What British Muslims Really Think” on Channel 4 on Wednesday. An ICM
poll released to the Times ahead of the broadcast reveals:

Thursday, April 7, 2016

Last week, French president Francois
Hollande met President Obama in Washington to discuss joint strategies for
stopping the sort of radical Islamic terrorists who have killed dozens of
innocents in Brussels, Paris, and San Bernardino in recent months.

Hollande at one point explicitly referred to the violence as “Islamist
terrorism.” The White House initially deleted that phrase from the audio
translation of the official video of the Hollande-Obama meeting, only to
restore it when questioned. Did the Obama administration assume that if the public could not hear
the translation of the French president saying “Islamist terrorism,” then
perhaps Hollande did not really say it — and therefore perhaps Islamist
terrorism does not really exist?

The Obama administration must be aware
that in the 1930s, the Soviet Union wiped clean all photos, recordings, and
films of Leon Trotsky on orders from Josef Stalin. Trotsky was deemed
politically incorrect, and therefore his thoughts and photos simply vanished.

Wednesday, April 6, 2016

There are Muslim men fighting for the
right to kill their wives. Groups of hard-line, right-wing Islamic extremists
across Pakistan have banded together in protest to reclaim the right to abuse
and kill their wives and daughters.

The country has finally taken a progressive step forward on gender
equality, but some men still believe the mistreatment of women is their divine,
God-given right. The controversy began when the Pakistani government introduced
the Protection of Women Against Violence Bill, which effectively criminalizes
violence against women in Punjab — the country’s most populous region.

Before the law was officially enacted
on March 1, diehard extremists attempted to block the legislation, saying it
would “destroy the family system in Pakistan” and “add to the miseries of
women.” The bill was passed unanimously by the Punjab Assembly, and opponents
have since warned of ongoing protests if it is not repealed.

Going Dark: The Internet Behind The
Internet. Tor is the main browser people use to access Darknet sites, allowing
users to remain completely anonymous.

The average computer user with an Internet connection has access to an
amazing wealth of information. But there's also an entire world that's
invisible to your standard Web browser. These parts of the Internet are known
as the Deep Web. The tools to get to there are just a few clicks away, and more
and more people who want to browse the Web anonymously are signing on.

Fans of the series House of Cards might
recall the Deep Web being worked into the plot of latest season. The character
Lucas, a newspaper editor who was trying find a hacker, gets a little crash
course from one of his reporters:

As Wisconsinites head for the polls,
our Beltway elites are almost giddy. For they foresee a Badger State bashing
for Donald Trump, breaking his momentum toward the Republican nomination. Should The Donald fall short of the
delegates needed to win on the first ballot, 1,237, there is growing certitude
that he will be stopped. First by Ted Cruz; then, perhaps, by someone
acceptable to the establishment, which always likes to have two of its own in
the race.

But this city of self-delusion should realize there is no going back for
America. For, whatever his stumbles of the last two weeks, Trump has helped to
unleash the mightiest force of the 21st century: nationalism. Transnationalism
and globalism are moribund.

First among the issues on which Trump
has triumphed – “We will build the wall – and Mexico will pay for it!” – is
border security. Republican candidates who failed to parrot Trump on illegal
immigration were among the first casualties. For that is where America is, and
that is where the West is.

Monday, April 4, 2016

Supermodel
Waris Dirie was just five when she became a victim of FGM (female genital
mutilation). As she collects an award for her campaign against the practice,
she explains why it has to stop.

Waris Dirie was about five years old
when she was left in a makeshift shelter under a tree for several days to
recover from her "operation", like all the girls in her community,
she had undergone female circumcision, more accurately known as female genital
mutilation (FGM). She still remembers her anger.

"When they tried to convince me
that God wants this, I said: 'Did my God hate me so much?' I remember telling
my mother: 'If he hates me, then I don't want him.'" In the days after
FGM, many girls die from blood loss or infection. Dirie says she lay there,
talking to God, saying "make me stay alive. You owe me this now."

Dirie,
born to a nomadic family in Somalia, describes herself as not exactly the kind
of daughter dreamed of by the traditional families in her community. As a very
young child, she was wilful and headstrong, constantly questioning everything.
When she was about 13, her father announced that she would be married to a man
in his 60s.

Neighbors Say the East New York Mosque Masjid-Al-Aman
Is "Too, Too Noisy".

Masjid-Al-Aman is a mosque that sits
near the border of Queens and Brooklyn in East New York, and offers prayers
five times a day. But some residents say the mosque's azan, or call to prayer,
is a nuisance—neighbors have filed 156 noise complaints against Masjid-Al-Aman.

"They have to have some consideration for us—it's noisy. Too, too
noisy," one neighbor gripes, adding that she can't get used to the azan
"because you have no idea when it's going to happen."

Not true, says one of the mosque's
congregants: “Calling to prayer for a Muslim, five times a day, is a
no-brainer. It’s an absolute necessity.”

"It is our religious and human right," one Muslim man aggressively added as if bothering others with loud harsh noises does not violate others' human right at all.

Saturday, April 2, 2016

Muslim Mother Sues Tampon Company for
‘Stealing’ her young Daughter’s Virginity.

Twin Falls, ID | An Idaho woman is suing the Kotex company for $1.4
million dollars after she claims one of her daughters lost her virginity while
using a tampon. The family’s attorney claims the product’s packaging did not
issue any warning about the possibility of losing one’s own virginity while
using the product.

“Why is there no warning that a women’s
hymen can be broken when the tampon is inserted into the vaginal region? This
is the question we ask,” explained Ben Ali Mufta, the family attorney.

“The breaking of the hymen and
resulting loss of virginity of my client’s daughter will have dire consequences
for this young girl for the rest of her life,” he told local reporters. “This
is a tragedy that could have been easily prevented had the company taken its
responsibilities,” he acknowledged yesterday. The breaking of the hymen and
resulting loss of virginity will have dire consequences for the young girl, believes
family attorney, Ben Ali Mufta.

Friday, April 1, 2016

‘Europe needs Myanmar’: New govt set to
join EU. Myanmar's new National League for Democracy government is preparing an
application to join the European Union, it has been revealed. Negotiations have
been proceeding in secret ever since the former opposition party swept to
victory in last November’s historic elections.

The complex and highly sensitive talks are being managed by a
high-powered but obscure think tank called Inconceivable Outcomes, based in
Sagaing Region. The agency is operating under the supervision of Aung San Suu
Kyi the incoming Minister for Foreignaffairseducationelectricpowerandenergyandofficeofthepresident
and otherthings as the need arises.

“The fact is, Europe needs Myanmar more
than Myanmar needs Europe,” said InOut’s director, Dr Than Hlaing, in a recent
interview. Speaking from an undisclosed location, Dr Than Hlaing explained the
thinking behind the application. “We’re actually negotiating from a position of
strength.

Europe’s suicidal green energy policies
are killing at least 40,000 people a year. That’s just the number estimated to
have died in the winter of 2014 because they were unable to afford fuel bills
driven artificially high by renewable energy tariffs.

But the real death toll will certainly be much higher when you take into
account the air pollution caused when Germany decided to abandon nuclear power
after Fukushima and ramp up its coal-burning instead; and also when you
consider the massive increase in diesel pollution – the result of EU-driven anti-CO2 policies –
which may be responsible for as many as 500,000 deaths a year.

But even that 40,000 figure is
disgraceful enough, given that fascist greenies are always trying to take the
moral high ground and tell us that people who oppose their policies are
uncaring and selfish.